


Skeleton Song

by bannanachan



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bannanachan/pseuds/bannanachan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aradia Megido ruminates on her years of service.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Skeleton Song

i.

Your name is Aradia Megido and you begin life as a statistic.

You are one in every 20 rustbloods to make it out of the breeding caverns. One of every five of those to demonstrate psychic ability. And one among 400 immature lowblooded trolls to die from violence among lowbloods per year. Alternia is neat about its bookkeeping, at least, even when it’s wrong about the facts.

You are entered into a database by drones, as is Sollux. He protests when they come to his door and keeps yelling Vriska’s name, but they just take a DNA sample and fly away. He is never prosecuted for anything – actually, the record is made mostly to ensure that he’s remembered as a candidate for helmsmanship upon ascension. You would have made a decent one, too, but not as good as him, so all-in-all, a worthy sacrifice of a worthless life.

Still, you continue living (so to speak) and you find a new role for yourself. You are Aradia Megido, and you are a servant.

You are not sure exactly to what, but you listen anyway, because you must. And because there is nothing else to do, you suppose. No one else really talks to you nowadays anyway.

It is not long before you regain some measure of life, through the mechanizations of both yourself and Equius Zahhak. Your head is a cage of solid metal and the voices of the dead are dulled through the density of it, drowned out by the clanging of parts in your cavernous mechanical chest. The calm you feel at this lasts for only a moment, however, as it takes only a moment for you to realize that you are still not alone. It isn’t a voice, so much as a feeling, an instinct.

It is not a voice. It is you.

This is the worst part. To serve yourself, and yet still be a servant.

You escape from Zahhak with your form intact, if not your dignity, and teleport off to the Land of Quartz and Melody to skulk. On Alternia after you died, you used to take some comfort in watching the moons pass across the night sky when you felt like this. (During the day, you devoted most of your time to trying as hard as you could to keep your mind shut tight: the dead became even louder when they got above ground). But here there is no moon, and no sun either, so you simply lay back on the ground and listen to the lilting chimes. There is dew on the patch of grass. You can feel yourself rust, and do not care.

And it is then that you find you have a new master.

He doesn’t give his name, but he seems nice enough. He says he has a hat just like the one you used to wear, which endears you to him a bit. He is surprised to hear you address him back, but does not take it badly, so you talk for a bit.

He is apparently a servant too, which you find a bit funny. He doesn’t put much effort into listening to his master, though, which once you meet his master you understand.

You tell him that you wish you could do the same, and he says All in good time, kid. Which makes you think that maybe he doesn’t understand completely.

You play the game. Surprisingly, above all, it is a relief. You have been a servant without a purpose, listening because there was nothing else to do. But the first time you see a copy of yourself tremble and spark into existence before your own eyes, you realize what you were meant for.

So it doesn’t bother you that much when you see your friends die. And if you feel anything – vindication, regret, determination, anything – when you kill one of them yourself, you have learned well enough to ignore it (so well that you barely feel it at all). It doesn’t bother you when there start to be so many of you that you’re not sure which one of them you are any more, when the voices of yourself start to outnumber the voices of the dead – or the other dead, actually.

It is so busy in your head sometimes that you feel like you are losing your mind. But it doesn’t bother you.

You are not bothered at all, actually, until the fight with the black king.

You are a servant. Each and every one of you is a servant, and above all, you are bound to serve. It is your duty to fly into battle without regrets or second thoughts or regard for the consequences. So it should not hurt to see them die. It should not hurt to see yourself ripped to shining sparking smithereens, over and over again, to hear metal rent from metal with a resounding creaking sound and see the bolts that used to hold the seam fly through the air. Your copies crushed by tentacles and swatted by claws and impaled on horns. They, as you, were born to serve until death. It should not bother you to see this come to pass, in the service of this noble goal.

It does.

You win until you don’t. This, at least, does not perturb you. You knew this ending before it came to pass, though of course you never let that slip. Honestly, you are just pleased to be the one who gets to continue on, for a few more hours at least. 200 Aradias killed by the Black King, and 800 more torn apart by Jack Noir. For the first time in your life, you are a survivor.

What you don’t expect is that this is the worst part.

For the first time in life, you are purposeless. The future is not entirely clear. You can tell that you are counting down to something, but you don’t know what. You are so irritable that you forget that you don’t have feelings and thus can’t be. You say things to an earth girl that make you seem like an idiot and you ribbit compulsively even more than usual. You try not to show it to anyone but you think Equius notices anyway. You avoid talking to him.

The clock is ticking down and all of your friends are going to die for sure this time, and you avoid talking to them.

But when all you have left is seconds, you realize that you don’t want to die alone. And you miss him.

For two minutes, you talk to Sollux. You have a conversation with him that matters for the first time in sweeps, and he is nice to you, and you get to say you’re sorry.

For the first time, you don’t die alone.

ii.

Your name is Aradia Megido and you are arisen anew.

The agency is actually more than a little overwhelming at first. It has been so long since you had a choice that you are not sure what you actually want to do.

You are sure of one thing, though. You do not want to die any more.

You are tired of being a statistic. You are done with being a servant. The fact that you now get to be a god is just a bonus.

Escaping from Jack is so easy that you almost can’t believe it. This is the demon that destroyed your future and killed hundreds of you, and you escape him in seconds. When you do, you float in the void and for a while, you do nothing but think.

Your heart is beating so fast. You are not sure what to focus on, the speed, the warm rich maroon blood, or the fleshy, natural heart. You are elated and overcome. There are tears of rust on your cheeks and it is not the contact of saltwater and metal.

You are alive. There are no unwelcome sounds in your head and, out here, there is no incessant tick of time reminding you that it’s passing, you’re counting down, your friends are counting on you to keep track and fast forward and rewind. You are alone and alive in the veil and you drift so happily with no thought other than that to occupy your head.

Eventually, you start to ponder what to do next. Knowledge that was never quite clear before comes to you, of dream bubbles and the many dead and a brighter future not too far off. Some of your friends are going to die before that future arrives, but some of them are not. For those who don’t, there is so much adventuring left to do.

Sollux is not one of these. Neither is Equius.

You take a breath to steady your nerves, feeling your lungs expand without creaking, without clanging, with a desperate need for real air instead of simple habit. Breathing is glorious. Living is glorious.

You decide that you are okay with this. Not 0k. But okay. You are, actually, really excited about all this! Everything is turning out just how it was meant to. Even if some of your friends don’t get to come with you, being dead is not so bad in this place anyway. After so many years, you have been rewarded for your service, and everything is going to be just fine.

It is not the end.

You know your purpose, and now at least, you are truly happy to fulfill it. Nonetheless, you are nervous – what if they don’t like you? What if they don’t recognize you? What if you don’t know what to say? You haven’t made conversation in a very long time.

But this is not the end, and there is no time to waste on questions like that. You are alive, and you are going to start living.

You take a deep breath, and jump in.

She is the first thing you see.

You have spent a long time looking at copies of yourself. Silver copies with red eyes and blue marks, made in cracking paint, ticking copies with dead mechanical voices coming from speakers instead of vocal cords. You were getting to be very, very tired of copies of yourself. You can see below her skin and above her body that she is really one of these, but you don’t hold that against her. She’s you, and you could nearly have been her – you are, in a way – so how could you?

And though you know it’s a mask, seeing the form she takes fills your heart up with a powerful bittersweetness and a triumph that brings tears to your eyes.

You float over (it’s so effortless with the wings) and whisper in her ear.

The story unfolds around you, but you aren’t passive. You find yourself leading, illuminating. You understand, and they don’t. You can help. You are an instrument, still, but it is like you are playing yourself.

You have found a purpose.

You alight from the bubble at the moment of its fading. It disappears slowly, but you can almost feel it pop under your feet as you emerge, graceful, at the top. There is a green light in the distance and you follow it. You float nearby it and stare for a long time. Funny – it doesn’t burn you.

And then you feel a presence beside you and your heart rises in your chest so suddenly. You don’t understand – sure, you’re new here, but this isn’t supposed to happen, you think. Then again, out here, there are no split timelines. You are still playing Sburb: if something happens, it was meant to. You were meant to live.

Apparently, so was he.

You take Sollux’s hand in yours and you watch the sun, awaiting friends – new and old, alive and dead – and destiny. You are gloriously, viscerally, incredibly alive, and you very much intend to stay that way.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is the result of a long-held discomfort with what often happens to Aradia in Sollux-centric fic, which is that she's pretty much his dead girlfriend and... that's that. It happens in really great fic and it's for good reason, obviously - she IS his dead girlfriend, after all - but it always felt a little too close to the [Women in Refrigerators trope](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WomenInRefrigerators) for me to be happy. Initially I meant it to just be the story of their relationship from her perspective, which it sort of is, but it's also sort of just a character exploration with Sollux existing nearby.
> 
> There's a third chapter to it that I'm very dissatisfied with, so it may or may not ever see the light of day. Oh well.
> 
> Thanks to [Otomatonom](http:/otomatonom.tumblr.com) for betaing as usual.
> 
> Title is from "Skeleton Song" by Kate Nash, which is a pretty excellent Aradia song.


End file.
